Sincere To A Fault

Menu

Status Report: Week 10 (Darn You, Night Trap!)

On Friday night (it was horror movie Friday after all), I decided to finally boot up the 25th anniversary edition of Night Trap to do a quick playthrough.

Ha.

HA HA HA.

AHAAAHHHAAAAAAAA.

So I’d never played the original, but I’d always heard about it and wanted to experience it for myself. I knew about the controversy surrounding it back in the day, and I knew it was one of the most FMV FMV games out there, however I didn’t realize just how arbitrary and “punishing” it could be.

The premise of the game is that you are bouncing around between several monitors in a house filled with traps to…well…trap bad guys. You are supposed to switch between the monitors and, all the while, pay attention to what people are saying; you only can hear them when the monitor they appear on happens to be the one you are watching. The reason this is important is, periodically, the color code for the trap system changes and you have to update it accordingly. If you do not, the traps fail to activate and, shortly thereafter, the game is over.

The first time I failed out for missing too many traps because I didn’t hear what color to change it to (I finally figured out it was supposed to go from blue to yellow). The second time, I was expecting it (it again changed from blue to yellow even though the color changes can be different each time), so I knew what to change it to and, while I was trapping baddies right and left, I still failed out for some reason.

So I looked up a walkthrough.

Apparently you can fail out at certain times for trapping certain baddies/other characters but the game gives no indication of that. The entire game is supposed to take around 30 minutes but, since I failed both times, I spent an hour with it, yet never saw credits.

I’m not going to lie: it kind of made me feel like I suck at games. I know that’s not true, but I felt like I should be able to beat this 30 minute FMV game without having to use a freaking FAQ.

I’m torn; I wasn’t having any fun at all playing the game. I feel like I should let this one go. The other part of me feels like since I own it and it’s a seminal part of video game history, I should hunker down and keep trying to beat it.

I’m still not sure which way I will fall, but I’m guessing I will be pulling up that FAQ and trying again so I don’t feel guilty about not completing it, or like some sort of quitter.

Urgh.

Earlier in the week I finally saw credits on Far Cry: Primal and, for the last couple of hours, I was more than ready for the game to be over. I was in the process of trying to attain the last of the skill points and certain side quests were glitching out on me and not awarding the skill points at the conclusions. I also found the last two boss fights to be less than stellar.

I also played Florence on iOS. I have many thoughts about it, but more on that later this week.

But, by and large, what I’ve been playing most is Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. There is a limited time event called Leif’s Spring Flowers event and it has some of the most whimsical and delightful rewards from any event thus far (in my opinion). The event centers around spring flowers (as you might expect) and ladybugs that spawn on said flowers. Unfortunately, both the spawn and capture rates have been abysmal (for me). They are as bad as (if not worse than) the first event Pocket Camp hosted. That event received such a negative reaction, the developers addressed it and made direct adjustments to the following event.

I love Pocket Camp, but when it feels like the devs are making things so difficult that it pushes you to consider microtransactions just to obtain all the rewards, that seems suspect to me. I know they need to make money on the title, but this feels like an odd way to do it. I’d far rather they just offered to sell those rewards outright.

Anyway, this week I will surely be looking for ladybugs at every possible chance. I will also be playing The St Christopher’s School Lockdown, Waiting for the Loop, and Crossing Souls. I’m also excited about my Wednesday and Friday pieces this week, so stay tuned.

I too have never played Night Trap but have had similar desires to give it a go. I don’t now, so thanks for that. The game sounds as terrible as everyone has ever said it did and I can’t see giving it time and money from other games I could be playing.

I’m hoping to wrap up Burnout 3 and Xenoblade Chronicles this week. I’m confident in one of those, the other I feel there will be a lot of grinding and I need to be in the mood to do that.

I don’t know how to feel about that! On one hand, I’m glad if I can keep you from wasting your time on something arbitrarily “difficult,” but I also feel like, oh no! What if you really wanted that experience and I ruined it!

But I do feel like your time and money could definitely be better spent elsewhere. It was…something.

I wish you much success in Burnout 3 and the same goes for the grind in Xenoblade. Either way, I hope you enjoy your time in whatever you choose to play. :)

Just planning to try & finish up episode 4 of TT’ Batman series. Other than that, I might play some more COD’ MP. Rebekah, what game(s) has your attention right now; what game(s) are you looking forward to in the next few months?

I’m sorry to hear that Night Trap wasn’t very much fun for you. I’ve never played it, but what I remember and have seen from playthroughs of old FMV games, they weren’t very intuitive. Though every now and then I see a new game come out in FMV style so there must be some nostalgia for those types of games. Hopefully the gameplay is more intuitive in those.

I’ve been participating in the Spring Flower event in Pocket Camp too. I’m not really a fan of the flower events. I prefer the ones like the crystal event where you just need the one type of item to craft the furniture. There’s too much RNG for the bugs and flowers, especially when they introduce new types halfway through.

I’ve been on a platforming kick for a while so I’ve been playing Yooka Laylee and Mario Odyssey on and off. I’m also playing Gleaner Heights and getting into the farming, fishing, mining loop.

Night Trap was fairly simple, it is just flawed in design. If you miss trapping too many baddies, you fail out. If you aren’t watching the right cameras at the right times, you miss hearing what color the codes change to. If you listen to those cameras, you miss trapping baddies. It’s sort of silly, really. I might try to go back in, because I don’t want to be bested by Night Trap!

I very much agree with you on the flower events in Pocket Camp. The RNG seems directly tied to microtransactions and I have an issue with that. I really liked the crystal event. I crafted so many of those huge crystals.